Priorities

We are a couple of months into the reign of the House GOP, and thus far, Republicans have tamed inflation and ended all crime in America.

Ha, not really. But it doesn’t matter, because you probably forgot that this was their whole campaign pitch last year. It was all, “vote Republican, or thugs will murder you and run off with your milk that cost $89 per gallon.”

Once Republicans actually took over the House, however, they “turned to investigations, abortion, threatening the national debt, and trying to defund the Internal Revenue Service rather than dealing with the issues they insisted were vital in 2022: crime and inflation.”

Currently, the GOP is working hard to convince Americans that the January 6 riots weren’t that bad, that trans people are coming to eat everyone’s babies, and that “woke” is a horrific, Lovecraftian monster so terrifying that it literally defies description.

Congressional Republicans spend their days on hearings designed to expose the Deep State’s weaponization of government, only to flop so badly that even fellow conservatives have tuned out on a “slow-moving train wreck” that exposes nothing more alarming than GOP incompetence.

And when Republicans aren’t spreading conspiracy theories or calling their opponents pedophiles, they are looking “backward resolutely and angrily to an imagined past,” completely oblivious and indifferent to the fact that they are “out of step with the majority of Americans on issues like LGBTQ rights, climate change, gun safety, and abortion.”

But hey, don’t go thinking that the GOP will change course, just because their agenda is ludicrous and millions of Americans hate their ideas. Keep in mind that the “oppressiveness and unpopularity of any particular policy has rarely deterred this bunch from pursuing it.”

Republican leaders know that “the MAGA base will ride and die for this right-wing culture war predominantly animated by fear and racial anxiety.” 

Now, on a human level, this grotesque ploy always backfires. After all, the GOP manipulates “white victimhood and rage… to win over — and kill — their own voters.”

But on a political level, it’s a big winner. Rage-filled conservatives continue to vote Republican, even if it is perfectly clear that the only beneficiaries of GOP policies are billionaires and corporations.

Yes, ever since Reagan, the US has “moved toward an economic policy that often allows corporations to behave as they want, based on the theory that the free market will solve any excesses.” But to be blunt, “the results haven’t been very good,” evident by the fact that during that time, “economic growth has slowed, corporate profits have risen faster than wages, income inequality has soared, and living standards have grown slowly.”

But if you try to explain that to a working-class guy living in small town, he will just shout about freedom and critical race theory and gay immigrants.

And he will vote Republican.